by Matt Killeen
Sarah wanted to claw at him, to hurt him. She felt the deep panic of total helplessness.
“Right, enough distractions—” Hasse began as the heightened roar of aircraft engines threatened to drown him out.
The aircraft that now filled the sky were small, not much bigger than the Storch that had traversed the Sahara, but they seemed stockier, thicker, and more threatening, festooned with bulbous projections. Face on, their wings seemed bent like those of a gull, and the bulging objects fell like droppings on a seaside shelter as the planes roared, then rattled and putted past them, revealing the cross of the Free French.
One moment the ground was an expanse of flat, matted, wet grass. The next it was fountains and clouds of mud climbing to the sky, dozens of interconnecting kar-umphs. The blast waves from so many explosions threw everyone to the ground.
THIRTY-FOUR
IT WAS LIKE a thick blanket had been laid across everything, for all sounds now seemed muffled. As Sarah looked up, a high-pitched, whistling ring accompanied the kicking waves of hot air that rolled in across the turf. The Ju 52 swept over them, the rippled metal riddled with holes and port engine ablaze. The prop vibrated as it spun, and a jet of dark liquid erupted from the casing, fading to a gray, oily smoke stream that hung in the air long after the monster had gone.
The bombing run was concentrated on the foxholes and rough fortifications at the tree line. But the nearest impacts were just thirty meters away and, rolling over, Sarah saw a few still and bloody figures among the mission staff and their captors. The rest were disoriented and clumsy, but they were beginning to come to their senses and scatter. The first instinct of the surviving mercenaries was to fall back to the truck and defend it. Sarah watched Samuel and Emmi sprinting toward the sea, hand in hand.
Hasse was on his knees, watching his plane as it struggled to maintain height and swung drunkenly out over the bay.
Sarah looked for Lisbeth. The howling noise in her ears continued and worsened as she moved. She saw the auburn-and-gold hair, and she crawled toward it. Lisbeth was facedown and motionless. Sarah wanted to speed up, to climb to her feet and run to her, but her body wouldn’t respond to the growing feeling of dread.
She reached her and, shaking her shoulders, called her name.
Lisbeth’s head jerked up from the wet grass, eyes wide with smudged makeup. She felt for her necklace, and then her head dropped back to the ground.
“Lisbeth! What is it?”
The body spoke. Sarah could barely hear the words and had to push her ear into Lisbeth’s hair.
“I’m fine, I’m trying not to get my head blown off,” the woman shouted.
Sarah sat up, threw her head back, and laughed. The explosions had made the Vichy side of the battle line a hellish channel of fire, impact, and boiling wind.
The little squat planes banked off over the bay and flew over the Ju 52 as it lost the last few meters of height and crashed into the sea in a flurry of broken propellers and seawater.
The mercenaries had finally noticed that their last task was incomplete and started to fire at the fleeing missionaries, but they had run in all directions and the targets were just too numerous and too far away.
Hasse was on his feet, but his shoulders sagged as he rubbed his forehead. He regarded the truck, which had lost all of its glass and blown two tires. Then he straightened and strode over to where Bofinger was picking himself up. He kicked the man as he passed and began to yell to the gunmen.
Sarah watched Hasse’s plans unravel and the little planes turning back for another pass, and she laughed and laughed in the muffled silence until it hurt too much to laugh more.
* * *
The victory was a small one, for Sarah at least. The mission staff were gone, but Hasse had acquired a new vehicle of sorts and Sarah, Lisbeth, and the professor were in the back of it, ringed by his remaining mercenaries.
The roads were crowded with retreating soldiers and anyone north of the town who didn’t want to greet the Free French on their arrival. No one had an interest in the rusting cattle truck with its well-armed passengers, but neither would anyone give way.
Sarah and Lisbeth couldn’t talk freely in front of Bofinger. He looked vacantly into space, stunned by the turn of events. She eyed the small pile of luggage at their feet, knowing that somewhere inside lay the components of a weapon that made the battle they’d just witnessed seem like a small child’s game. She drew her legs back from the nearest pack.
Eventually, as the truck reentered the town, they met refugees surging in the other direction, unaware that the Free French forces were closing in from all sides. Hasse, who had entirely lost his relaxed and affable exterior, had to abandon the cattle truck.
The gunmen pushed through the crowd, surrounding and herding Sarah and the others down the hill toward the harbor. A mercenary hit someone with the butt of his gun. There were screams and blood, but the crowd was too tightly packed for anyone to react, and the body fell under the feet of the throng. Sarah knew she might be able to drop and roll out of the moving prison, getting lost in the surge, but that meant leaving Lisbeth and the samples behind . . .
She leaned into Lisbeth as if needing support.
“Where are the samples? I can get away,” she whispered urgently into her hair.
“No, my love. It’s too dangerous,” Lisbeth mumbled back.
A gunman pushed at her with the barrel of his gun.
Maybe Lisbeth was right. She’d only get one chance, one go at getting away, and failure meant the end of everything. Hasse was tolerating her because he thought she was valuable to him—a walking incubator—but she could as easily be bound and carried, even end up in a cage like Ngobila.
And she couldn’t leave Lisbeth. That knowledge, that weakness, was like her own gunshot wound, slowing her, making her think too much, too carefully. Just as Norris had identified in the Captain, she couldn’t commit to the move.
Finally the harbor came into view. Two ships remained for those trying to escape the fighting. The French merchant was already steaming for the sea, very low in the water. Its decks and rigging were swarming with people, many more than would be safe in the South Atlantic waters.
A great booming rolled in from the ocean. The smoke stacks of two great ships were visible on the horizon, and the flash of their guns could just be seen. The curious watched the action through binoculars from a two-story house, a reminder that many would welcome the new regime.
The German ship at the far end of the pier still had clear decks, thanks to armed sailors in the rigging controlling the crowd.
Hasse’s men fought through the crush along the quay and onto the pier, forcing some people into the water. Anger boiled over, but one look from the dead eyes of the heavily armed gunmen was enough to make everyone think twice before acting.
They reached the Ittenbach. It was a small steam cargo vessel, just two masts and one funnel. It was old, maybe thirty years had passed since its heyday, but it was meticulously painted, patched, and cared for, like it was a museum piece rather than a working ship.
The gangplank had been withdrawn to stop the refugees from swarming the decks, but the boatswain was busy negotiating with those on the pier.
The ship’s captain was standing on the forecastle, leaning over the white rail. Sarah was unsurprised to see that the comatose drunk from Bofinger’s dinner was really no such thing. He saw them approaching and straightened up.
“Herr Hasse, you said three in all. I see four.”
“I can pay, you know that,” Hasse shouted up.
“Money doesn’t change my weight limits. That’s a rough sea out there.”
“I’ll pay enough for you to leave all your other passengers at the dock,” Hasse insisted.
The ship’s captain grunted. “Fine, but you leave your private army here.” He waved them forward, and his crew began to manh
andle the gangplank back into position.
There was an explosion in a nearby street and rapid gunfire, as a cloud of smoke rolled into view. Those nearby began screaming and pushed forward into the people on the quay. To avoid being thrown into the water like some, the crowd flowed onto the pier.
The surge of people couldn’t be held back and mounted the deck of the Liberian trawler.
One of the gunmen was carried away with the motion.
Sarah saw a gap. A real opportunity, maybe the last, to escape from Hasse. To find the Captain, to leave. To accept the mission had failed. It was not her fault—
YOU brought Clementine. YOU were lonely and needed someone. YOU failed her. YOU allowed her to steal the Captain’s morphine. YOU led Hasse to us. YOU are responsible for this. ALL of this.
Sarah was stunned by the clarity of the thought, by the sudden understanding of her culpability.
She looked at Hasse, who was fighting off a man who had been thrust into their circle. The SS officer struck the interloper in the face and he went down underfoot.
He had to die. To protect the Captain and Norris and the millions of Slavs and . . . and Lisbeth. Sarah had to bring about his death.
It was a cold thought. Like an icicle had formed at her heart. So she clung to the thought of protecting the woman. She squeezed Lisbeth’s rough and oily hand, hoping that it would warm her.
The gangplank was down, and their guards pushed them toward it. Bofinger climbed on first, then Hasse shoved Lisbeth along it, tugging Sarah in her wake. The gunmen threw their luggage over the rail onto the deck. Sarah watched it bounce and clatter and wondered if the samples were still intact. Hasse passed a roll of notes to one of the gunmen and leapt aboard. Two of the crowd had mounted the gangplank, and the mercenaries knocked them into the harbor with the butts of their rifles. Then the gangplank was raised, and the gunmen vanished into the melee.
“Right!” boomed the ship’s captain to the crowd on the pier. “The fare is ten thousand francs per person, in cash, hold it above your head and you can board, otherwise you can go back, right now.”
The gunfire of the approaching Free French clattered in the very next street. There was another surge from the crowd. The wealthy were holding their banknotes over their heads now, and scuffles broke out.
Sarah turned away from the chaos.
Hasse was looking at them, revolver in hand.
“Next stop, New York,” he said, and smiled.
That smile will make this easier, thought Sarah.
THIRTY-FIVE
THE SHIP WAS crowded when it cast off. The harbor had filled with fishing boats, their captains detecting the scent of money in the air. There were even the rowboats of the highly optimistic, so the ship pulled away carefully, sounding its horn. The sailboats had the right of way, but today, all rules were suspended.
Before Hasse waved them below, Sarah saw the swastika ensign being lowered. The crew were busy erecting canvas shelters, going to work on the hull with acetylene torches, and a sailor with a pot of black paint was about to shimmy down the hull at the bow. It seemed like a lot of activity before the ship was even clear of the breakwater.
The SS officer had secured two cabins. He motioned Lisbeth and Sarah into one with his gun. It was stuffy and gloomy, and smelled of socks and fish. The lantern on the wall flickered, and the engine’s rumble made the walls shudder.
“Is that necessary?” Lisbeth asked, pointing to his weapon.
“Possibly not.” Hasse shrugged. “However, I’ve become nervous, my dear. I know you’re far from happy, and I wouldn’t want you jumping ship before we’re clear of land. This is going to be fine. I’ve got some friends who will be delighted to get you back to Germany once they’ve obtained the samples.”
“How long to New York from here?” Lisbeth protested. “Weeks? A month? The samples will be dead before then, and useless to them.”
“There are solutions to all of those problems. They’ll be happy to make more for you to take to the Reich.”
Sarah felt like something was crawling across her skin.
She was the supposed source of this solution, but she knew they wouldn’t stop with her. The samples would mean there would be other cages, other Ngobilas, bleeding out pools of useful infection.
“I would like to be dropped off somewhere, anywhere,” Lisbeth declared. “You don’t need me.”
“No, I’m sorry. You’re too valuable. Your knowledge is essential, with my friends or back in the Fatherland. You’re needed by the Reich, Dr. Fischer.” He walked to the door. “Welcome home,” he added before leaving.
The door closed and a key turned in a lock.
“He’s locked us in, on a boat,” Lisbeth hissed. She sat on the bunk and fiddled with her necklace. “What do we do now?” she whined.
“We could wait, lull him into a false sense of security, and make him think we’re compliant.”
“Or?”
“We kill him right now.”
Lisbeth laughed. Then she looked at Sarah and stopped.
* * *
The ship started to roll as soon as it was clear of the harbor. Sarah had read that the waves of the South Atlantic were notoriously moody and capricious, but now they were swollen and agitated by the rainy season.
As the floor fell away, and she did not, Sarah felt her body revolting against this turn of events. She wondered how long she might be useful, before she had to vomit, before she had to lie down and close her eyes. Motion sickness was clearly incompatible with being a spy.
She slid two bobby pins from her hair and, straightening them, went to work on the lock. It was rusty, and every unexpected shift of the ship knocked her off balance enough to make her have to start again. At one point she had to close her eyes and rest her head against the bulkhead to stop the sensation of spinning that overtook her.
“He has to drop . . .” Sarah said, between biting down on her tongue.
Click.
“. . . these people off . . .” she continued, and bit down again.
Click.
“. . . somewhere,” she went on. “He’s not going to take them to the United States . . .”
Click. Tchick.
The door unlocked.
“Then he’ll lock me in the hold and turn me into a virus factory.” Sarah turned to look at Lisbeth. “If I don’t get sick, he’ll help me on my way, using your samples—”
“Not my samples—”
“The mission’s samples.”
“I can’t believe my father brought that man into our lives.”
There was a thud, a sudden whining roar right overhead, and then a deep, explosive splash. After that there was the sound of heavy rain on the deck above. The ship shook and then leaned hard to starboard, before slowly righting. The engines, audible as a constant thudding rumble through the bulkheads, began to slow.
They both looked at the ceiling.
“I think that is our cue, don’t you?” Lisbeth said.
* * *
As they mounted the ladder to the deck, they could hear a distant booming voice but couldn’t quite make out what it was saying. The cold hit them as soon as their heads emerged from the hatch, the wind whipping any warmth away with the back of its hand.
The deck was crowded with passengers, and Hasse was nowhere to be seen, so they were able to slip to the rail unobtrusively.
The sea was a rolling landscape of gray-and-green darkness, with sinews of white foam. It would itself have been breathtaking, but a few hundred meters away, and cutting a parallel line through the water as if it were warm butter, was a warship. It felt huge, as it was twice the length and height of the Ittenbach, and the pennant number L37 painted on its gray side was as tall as their entire hull. If that wasn’t threatening enough, a second warship, a longer, slimmer, and more heavily armed beast, cut a distant
perimeter around them at a seemingly unfeasible speed. At the stern of both vessels flew the same flag—a red cross on a white background, and an unmistakable British flag in its corner.
The voice, speaking in German with an English accent through a megaphone, was clearer.
“. . . and heave to for inspection.”
From the bridge above them, a loudspeaker crackled and the captain’s voice answered in French.
“We don’t understand you. This is the merchant vessel Frère Jacques II, from Marseille, flying the ensign of the Free French Merchant Navy . . . vive de Gaulle!”
Sarah noticed the freshly painted shelters on the deck, the new holes and shapes cut into the superstructure where the metal still smoked and glowed. There was even a second funnel shape built of canvas and wood. But it hadn’t been enough to change their silhouette.
“Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?” the distant voice mocked in French before switching back to German. “We repeat: You are the Ittenbach, from Hamburg, flying a French flag, like a commerce raider. You are ordered to heave to and submit to inspection.”
“You want to board us?” the voice from the bridge continued in French.
The aft gun of the warship lit up as ball of flame erupted from it. The concussive thud followed just after, and again a whining roar passed over them. Most of the passengers threw themselves to the deck. The shell impacted the water seconds later, many hundreds of meters away.
“No more games, Ittenbach. We are only talking because you have a large number of passengers, and we will take them aboard, along with your crew . . . You might want to go down with your ship. That’s up to you.”
The last two sentences were delivered in English, as if the translator had forgotten to turn off his megaphone. Sarah wondered if the Ittenbach’s captain understood.